Wastelands Book I: Taming the Dead
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [AU] It is a world where the living kill the walking dead, and anything in between becomes a weapon until they lose their usefulness or their lives. This is the story of a girl who searches for the strongest weapon of them all to survive.


**A/N:** This is a six-book series, this first one focusing almost exclusively on Ruki and Renamon. (I won't spoil the others just yet :D). It's written for the 100 prompts, up to 100 MCs challenge with prompt #005 – hew, as well as for the Female Character Appreciation Challenge with the character Maniko Ruki (both challenges are at the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges Forum, the link to which is on my profile).

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**Wastelands  
Book I: Taming the Dead**

**_Chapter 1 _**

She walks in the dusty sand, rifle loosely in hand because to hold it taut means to admit fear and she's fearless. She has to be: the world is a brutal place, especially for a child and a female and she was both. But she could be brutal too: the scar on her hand and the gaping hole where a molar should be is proof of that. It's a fresh tooth she's lost, but an adult one. She won't be getting it back, but the incisors are the important ones, that tear through the leathery flesh of their sun-baked prey. The molars aren't used for much, so they're not an altogether bad loss.

Of course, your life is the most valuable thing: the thing worth losing everything else for. A weapon is the next thing: a gun with no bullets has more use than a spare arm with knuckles forming the only defence. The monsters mostly are too strong to be taken down by fists alone, no matter how weak they are in relative. But weapons, basic weapons, were in abundance.

She has her rifle, which is pretty good as far as the basic weapon goes, but she wants better. Everyone who aims to survive more than a few days on their own aim for better. Anyone who's serious about their life, who doesn't have some foolhardy dream to toss it all away for, aims for better. Because a basic weapon can kill the feeble prey and maim a slightly stronger one, but the ones that are worth the most cash are the ones who can crush the blade of a knife or a handgun in their strong claws.

And there's a lot of those. Ruki's seen a lot of those, though she's barely fought them. She can't; she makes her living off cheaper prey, easier prey. Prey that will fall to the handgun she'd had – and the rifle once she'd made enough for an upgrade. Getting an upgrade from the rifle isn't so easy though. Finding monsters are easy enough. Finding other humans wandering around the wasteland is easy enough as well – though she doesn't care for them. Often they're in the way: either trying to take the resources she had or the kill she aimed for, or begging for them.

When she'd been the one begging, most hadn't spared her a second glance. Scraps of food bad been the best she could get, but she'd quickly learnt. Learnt that fighting the monsters earned cash, but to fight them you needed something strong enough to help you win. For the weak ones, it's something that could pierce their skin. For the bigger ones, it's something stronger than even the strongest gun they knew. A different sort of weapon, and that's what she's searching for now.

She's strong; she's fought man and monster and come out on top. She's seen some of the strongest monsters in the desert plain and walked away from them without a single loss – because strength isn't just about how sharp you can shoot or throw but how well you can run away. That's the main thing, really. Even if you kill a monster you need to know how to run.

She spots one's shadow easily beyond the next dune, but she also spots its strength…and it's pretty weak. She's not keen to waste a bullet on it, and its sluggish movement is hardly worth a shot at sniper's range in any case. They do surprise, sometimes. Not very often; the monsters don't have much of a conscience, so you could usually count on them to be as they appear. Not humans though; humans were a different story, full of slippery little tricks. More often than not, they've got sharper fangs than the beasts.

She knives it instead, with a knife she'd stolen some years back from a Pipsi-sellar in the desert market. It's not a good knife; she's had to sharpen it many times and the blade's shrunk noticeably now, but it still does the job and it gave her a few mouthfuls of food when she'd nothing.

That first kill had been slow as well, but small and messy too. This one's just a large big lump, and she doesn't look forward to lugging it back to the nearest seller. She does it anyway; size counts for quite a bit on the market and effort is more than worth its reward. It's the small fast that are worth less than what it takes. Ones the old crones call "cat-like" – whatever a cat was supposed to be, and whatever degree of similarity "like" suggests.

She's seen the monsters though, and they're ones that most people let go. They're annoying, but their claws can barely cut through skin. For them in the dry desert, it doesn't do much: they've got tough skin anyway. She's never been to the tropics, but she hears their skin is soft and brown and stretchy like cooked meat, the kind sharp incisors can cut through in a bite.

She supposes that means the monsters rule the tropics. It'd be a Hunter's paradise if there was an easy way to get there – but who needed to, when monsters in plenitude existed in the deserts. Frankly, you're better off looking for a place void of deserts, where they could grow up in peace and providence, where they don't have to worry about surviving the night or catching kills before someone else swooped in for the prize. And that always happened in the busy times: more often humans fought other humans than the monsters they sought, and the monsters by far outnumbered them. There was no coordination, no teamwork. Everyone looks out for themselves and that's the way the world works.

When you're looking for an upgrade though, you do that in the quiet times. Because you can risk someone stealing a kill or two; you can only keep so much with you anyway before you have to sell it, and selling too much to fast lowers the value and the price. Everything's expensive; food's not so bad, especially the cheap stuff like the Pipsi meat. But weapons? Weapons are an arm and a leg…and while you can probably afford the arm, the leg might pose a problem. Ammunition especially – but relying on close-range weapons was a dangerous gambit. They've got a longer reach? You're pretty much dead.

Ruki plays smart. She got her hands on a gun as soon as she could. It wasn't a great one at first, but then again, she hadn't paid the price it demanded. Still, she managed and moved on to bigger kills, moved on from filling the trays with Pipsi meat that sold at twenty digidollars a piece. The rifle though, that she earned fair and square and it serves her well.

But she wants better. She _needs_ better. Not for small fry like the lump she heaves to a stall and dumps at the entrance while demanding her price, ready to bully her way to it like she mostly has to. Because everybody's greedy: no-body wants to let go of their money. It's handy being a Hunter and being good at it though. You have esteem. You have _recognition_. People know your face and your name and know to be a little weary of you.

Those with things to protect beyond their life take the safer and less satisfying route. Though that won't stop the monsters from ransacking their houses, from attacking them. They don't have a conscience: they don't care what gets in their way, what's in front of them. But neither does a Hunter: most of them have tasted human flesh and it's not the best thing in the world but it's also not the worst. Taste isn't so valuable a thing anymore: anyone does anything to save money, save effort. They're not noble warriors out slaughtering an army of evil. The monsters aren't even evil: they're just taking resources people need, and that's a feud that won't resolve.

Being a Hunter means you look out only for yourself. It means you kill things worth killing in a single shot and profit from the remains. It means that if you find a little gold band you cash it in for a little bonus and don't think about those stupid stories about people in love giving them to one another. It means you're not the best yet, and you can either step cautiously now and take the risk or go out and search for the evolution.

Ruki's doing the latter; she plays it safe while hunting but not with her life. She thinks she can handle the step-up, so she will; it's about time anyway, she thinks, and if she does find an advance weapon to suit her needs she's set for life…or until the weapon dies. _They_'_ve_ got minds of their own, those weapons. And yet their loyalty lies with the wielder and them alone. They're the perfect shield, the perfect sword. They're the only things that can mean you can sleep without a drop of fear at night because there's something to watch your stomach and your back.

But it's not easy finding them: monsters are too many even in the quiet times and on her return trip she leaves the monsters alone. They're small, with buzzing sounds that make her want to shoot them just to shut them out, but the ammunition is more precious to her and their little pincers will barely pierce her skin and leave nothing behind. The desert was responsible for that: the constant sand and dust made them quite resilient. They, the desert-dwellers, weren't soft like water. They were hard.

She spies a flash of yellow amongst the monsters and she smirks; monsters are white and black and grey, but never the colour of the sun and sand. That makes them even easier to spot. And the sand is beastly, but no beast. There's no wind, so it can't be moving on its own.

She can't make it out: just small flashes of yellow she could be imagining the drift of the sand, but she thinks she's not. She thinks she's found one of those things: the ones that can become the ultimate weapons. Not alive, like humans called themselves. Not dead and moving like they called the monsters – or dead and immobile and cooked like they called their food. They're somewhere in between and she still hasn't heard a good name for them – but names aren't so important now. She hasn't said hers for years because she hasn't met a single thing worth telling it to.

She might have to though, to win this thing's allegiance. Her rifle's ready now: it's not a casual scene anymore: it's a fight, and it's made more complicated by the buzzing beasts still around. But they're not lethal, and as long as they're not Ruki shuts them out. Her eyes are on the bigger prize now – and her rifle's on it too.


End file.
